Pennsylvania Office of Open Records needs more funding

The deluge of open records appeals shows citizens want easy access to government documents.

We’ll let Terry Mutchler, executive director of the state Office of Open Records, have the first part of this editorial. In an e-mail last week sharing her office’s annual report, she wrote:

“The Office of Open Records has faced an 89 percent increase in the number of appeals filed with it since 2009 under the Right-to-Know Law.

“The annual report showcases the skyrocketing workload fueled in large part by the public’s increased attentiveness to the what, how, and why surrounding the actions of its government. It’s astounding that after four years of record highs, our caseload keeps increasing.

“The Office of Open Records is an independent quasi-judicial office that currently has eleven staff. Of those, six attorneys resolved all 2,188 appeals in 2012.

“... In addition to adjudicating the nearly 2,200 appeals filed in 2012, the Office of Open Records fielded over 10,000 telephone calls and e-mail inquiries and participated or monitored nearly 170 cases in the Courts of Common Pleas, Commonwealth Court, and Supreme Court. Additionally, the Office of Open Records has conducted nearly 800 trainings statewide since 2009 and responded to over 750 Right-to-Know Law requests filed with the Office of Open Records in 2012.

“A snapshot of the report shows that 752 appeals were filed against state agencies and 1,436 appeals were filed against local agencies. Requestors sought, among other records, inspection reports of school cafeterias, cost information of agency investigations, information concerning how property tax assessments are determined, amounts spent on litigation and e-mails of government officials.

“The Right-to-Know Law and Office of Open Records remain strong and effective tools enabling citizens to maintain a transparent and accountable government. Pennsylvania continues to emerge as a national leader in open government as it now ranks as high as fifth in national transparency rankings.”

Now that’s what you call a successful state agency ­— one that just a few years ago didn’t even exist.

Pennsylvanians are using the office to gain access to the records their tax dollars pay for — and using that information as they see fit in our free society. Secrets are the enemy of democracy — and freedom does not exist for long in a nation where transparency is not required of government leaders.

The Office of Open Records helps us reach for our highest ideals. Mutchler and her staff are to be applauded for hard work that has elevated Pennsylvania from one of the least transparent states in the nation to, as she notes, No. 5 in a recent survey.

But that success comes at a price — literally. In the annual report, Mutchler notes that her staff is quickly becoming overwhelmed with cases. More staff and more funding are needed to keep our state on an upward trajectory.

Lawmakers and Gov. Tom Corbett face difficult budget choices, but this is one area where additional resources are warranted.

Clearly, people are interested in these records. They want to fulfill their roles as citizen watchdogs and keep an eye on their elected and appointed leaders. Clearly, they’re still running into roadblocks when they seek records from local and state agencies, often resulting in OOR appeals.

And it’s important to note that most requests are coming from regular citizens, not the media, not businesses and lawyers, just regular folks looking to see how their government is working (though, admittedly, there are an alarming number of appeals filed by inmates who might be just toying with the system).

But the bottom line is we need this office, we need it to function well, and we need to make sure it has the funding to do so.